two thin blue line love stories from Key West, which ought to make tourists want to flock down here to get in on the action

left, Charles Eimers photo used down here before the CBS video aired, right, Charles Eimers in the CBS video

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Here is the “teaser” for this week’s blue paper – www.thebluepaper.com – article on the Charles Eimers case. Click on the link next below, or the link at the end of the teaser, to see the entire blue paper article. Click on the video shot by tourist link to see what blew to smithereens the KWPD’s already announced version of what happened.

The CBS News report on the death of Charles Eimers on Thanksgiving Day finally aired last Wednesday morning. CBS News filmed a portion of their ‘CBS This Morning’ show on South Beach, where the arrest of Eimers by multiple Key West police officers occurred.

But the television report focused less on the arrest itself and the possible use of excessive force leading to Eimers’ death than on what happened after the arrest. They showed excerpts from medical records that show that police apparently claimed Eimers ran away, resisted arrest, and did not have a pulse by the time the police got to him. An account which was then flatly contradicted by a video shot by a tourist, which shows a radically different version of the facts. […full article]

I submitted this comment:

YOUR COMMENT IS AWAITING MODERATION.
MAY 23, 2014

Thanks for yet another excellent article and a link to the CBS video. Hard to believe CBS did not credit the blue paper with breaking the story, without which CBS would have had no story to report. I think the blue paper should receive a Pulitizer for its coverage of the Eimers case.

So far, the only rights I have seen protected by the authorities in the Eimers case are police officers’ rights.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about the CBS report is it forced Mayor Cates and some city commissioners to go public, something the blue paper, the Citizen, private citizens, David Paul Horan and I were unable to get Mayor Cates and those commissioners to do. CBS’s report did something none of the rest of us could do: reveal to a national and international audience that all is not well in so-called paradi$e; tourist$ might not be $afe here.

In yesterday’s Citizen article on the CBS report, Mayor Cates was quoted as saying the coverage was “one-sided” (against the city). If you factor in (or out) what CBS knew but did not include in its report, then the report was one-sided in favor of Key West.

Some examples:

CBS did not report KWPD and Key West public relations officer Alyson Crean, former Bureau Chief of the Keynoter, put out a public statement after the blue paper broke the Eimers case; then, after Alyson learned from the blue paper, the Citizen, and others, that what she had put out was not correct, she never retracted it.

CBS did not report Eimers was profiled by KWPD as homeless, or a statement by one of the cops’ friends that the cop had bragged about roughing the bum (Eimers) up.

CBS did not report the city’s aggressive homeless policy, which the police inflicted on Eimers.

CBS did not report Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) have not yet interviewed a number of civilian witnesses to what happened at South Beach.

CBS did not report FDLE investigator Kathy Smith is the mother of KWPD Captain Scott Smith’s child and there is an FDLE procedure prohibition against its investigators investigating someone with whom they are, or were, closely related.

CBS did not report that, prior to CBS doing its investigation, Mayor Cates and the city commissioners had been silent about the Eimers case, and only broke their silence when CBS came to Key West.

Bottom line: Eimers was profiled by KWPD as being homeless and the rest is history.

Maybe the CBS report will seize the interest of the US Department of Justice and the F.B.I. I recall a young black male being profiled in Sanford, Florida, and President Obama, US Attorney General Eric Holder, the F.B.I., the NAACP, etc., not to mention Florida Governor Rick Scott, went all out to get to the bottom of it.

An Internet friend in Nashville, who has been following the Eimers case, wrote to me yesterday:

” If anyone takes the time to look at the bystander’s video, it is perfectly clear that the KWPD are lieing.”

I replied:

“Yep, when Eimers ran out of air with his face and nose stuck in the sand and several cops on top of him making sure his face and nose were stuck there, and one cop elbowed Eimers in the back of the head, or was it the neck?, his innate natural survival instinct kicked in and he started squirming, wiggling and kicking like crazy to get air. Perhaps fitting justice for the cops on top of him is to get the same treatment until they quit squirming, wiggling and kicking, so they can know the truth that will set them free, but into what?”

“I learned earlier in the day from Tom Milone that CBS will cover the Charles Eimers case the next morning, nationally. This is the result of Key West the Newspaper, the blue paper’s reporting. I told you during an earlier commission meeting that Charles Eimers’ death was the direct consequence of the city’s aggressive homeless policy, which you set; a policy your police use to make homeless people as miserable as possible, hoping to get them to leave Key West and the area. You know from the blue paper’s reporting, including the bystander’s video, that there is a terrible problem in your police department. Yet, so far, I have not heard that you publicly expressed remorse. I have not heard that you publicly apologized to the Eimers family. That is outrageous. It is unconscionable. I think you should resign.”

During their closing comments, Mayor Cates and the commissioners (Commissioner Weekley was out of town) said nothing about the Eimers case. Instead of talking to their citizens in the audience and watching on TV, the mayor and some of the commissioners talked to CBS and to the Key West Citizen.

Moving sideways, also in today’s blue paper, open the teaser links to see the whole article:

The only image Kaeden can remember of his Dad is that of a comatose man connected to tubes and wires lying on a hospital bed. In fact Kaeden was only a few months old when, three years ago, his father, Mathew Shaun Murphy was ‘tased’ by a Key West police officer on Duval Street and fell into a coma.

“That was the last time we talked; the last words we said to each other were said that night before he fell,” says Marie Annulysse, Murphys fiancé and Kaeden’s mother. […full article]

I submitted this comment:

SLOAN BASHINSKY YOUR COMMENT IS AWAITING MODERATION.
MAY 23, 2014

I learned of this article being published today when I dropped by Naja and Arnaud’s home last night to tell them the CBS video on the Charles Eimers case, which went down for a while yesterday, back up and working.

When Naja asked me, as a former practicing attorney, what I thought the cop who used the taser should have done, I said, if I were the cop, I would have gotten between the two men and told them to stand down. I would have had the taser drawn and ready to use.

When Naja said the police need better training, I said I didn’t think that is the issue. The issue is, why was this cop hired to begin with? No amount of training would get this cop to do what a good cop would have done.

That was before I had read the article. After reading the article this morning, I still say, if I had been that cop, I would have gotten between the two men, with taser drawn, and told them to stand down.

When Naja argued that the city should pay the diabled man’s medical costs and damages to his fiance and their child, I said I agreed, but I doubted the city would go along with it. Mayor Cates declined to pay just the burial costs of a homeless man one of his daughters ran over and killed on North Roosevelt Blvd shortly after he was elected; from all I had been able to learn, it seemed she and the homeless man were both partially at fault.

When Naja repeated that the city should pay for what the cop did to the now hospitalized and crippled man, I said I didn’t see today’s jurisprudence going along with that. Tasers are accepted by cities, counties, states, the federal government and the courts as acceptable police weapons; it has been decided that protecting police officers from injury while doing what they sometimes have to do is more important than an unexpected tasing casualty such as this poor man experienced.

When Naja said a lawyer should bring a lawsuit for this man, I said I didn’t think a lawyer would do it, but if it happened, there might be some sort of settlement.

That also was before I read the article this morning. If you have witnesses giving different versions of what actually happened, that makes the case tougher to prove, thus tougher for a lawyer to want to take on.

I learned just the other day that two of the KWPD officers, who were on top of Charles Eimers at South Beach, had prior investigations against them by the Key West Citizens Review Board, and there was nothing about those CRB investigations in those officers’ personnel files at KWPD. Naja confirmed that last night.

I don’t expect to see Mayor Cates and the city commissioners do any more about Michael Murphy’s case, than they have done about the Charles Eimers case. I expect them to continue to back their police and give them awards, no matter what comes out.
REPLY

A woman friend living in north Georgia called me this morning and said she dreamed last night that I was pedaling my bicycle somewhere and two police officers came and started harassing me. I got off my bicycle and they kept harassing me.

I rode my bicycle to Arnaud and Naja’s home last night, to, it turned out, speak with them about the two KWPD cases reported above.

I told my north Georgia friend that I thought her dream might be about two Key West police cases harassing me, and she could read all about that after I had today’s post up at goodmorningkeywest.com.

After I get that done, I’m headed for Harpoon Harry’s,

hoping to have my spirits lifted yet again by my friends who work there. What a crappy job, I imagine Arnaud and Naja Girard

would agree.

Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Political advertisement paid for and approved by Sloan Bashinsky, for Mayor of Key West

About Sloan

Darn, that would take a while. Try the autobiographical pages in the header. Ditto for header menu pages at www.goodmorningbirmingham.com. Hatched and raised there, eventually I ran away from home.
Here's a short list: Born 1942; male; single; accused of all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable things, perhaps some true. Live on Key West of Weird asteroid. Publish something most days on this website, been at that since July 2007. That's heaps of catch-up reading, probably not recommended.